Flower for a Bride (20 page)

“Oh, come, now!” The marquiz rallied her, with the twinkle positively dancing in his eyes. “That you already permit my nephew to bully you is bad! Young things must have life and variety, and from all I have observed of you you are shut away here and see little of anything or anyone! Julyan has no right to dictate the manner in which you shall enjoy your own recreation.”

“As my employer I’m afraid he has,” Lois replied, with a faint sigh.

“Then I will have a word with him on the subject.” Then his face went rather more grave. “But he has already told me that you leave in a week or so! Is it because of these restrictions that are imposed upon you?”

But she shook her head, and unconsciously she sighed again.

“No, senhor. I have no serious quarrel with the restrictions, but it is agreed that I am not quite the right person for the job.”

“You mean that you and my nephew are both agreed?”

“More or less.... I know in his heart he thinks I am not right, but he was prepared to give me a second chance. You see, senhor,” finding it suddenly easy to confide in him, “on the only occasion I went out for the evening Mr. Enderby brought me home, and unfortunately he kissed me on the front doorstep!” She looked away and felt tempted to smile as the old gentleman’s eyes rolled with delight. “It was not that I invited the kiss, you understand, senhor?— I am not the least little bit interested in Mr. Enderby except as someone who speaks my language exactly as I speak it, and with whom it would be pleasant to spend an hour or so occasionally. And he is only interested in me for the same reason.”

"And in England the kiss is taken for granted, is that it?” pulling her down on to a white-painted seat and looking as if the revelations intrigued him.

“Oh, no, no, senhor!” she denied instantly. “But a kiss such as that. . . .”

“Merely between friends?” the marquiz suggested.

She looked at him as if she doubted the solemnity of his expression.

"It was the sort of thing I wouldn’t permit to happen again.” she said firmly.

“And in order that there should be no danger of it happening again my nephew tried to exert his authority over you, with the result that you are now like a bird in a cage, and with no chance at all of fluttering your wings? But that is a situation of which I do not approve”—he shook his head very definitely—“and although I have some sympathy with Julyan when he inferred that this was not quite the right position for you to fill, still something must be done about things as they are at present. We must not permit you to pine.”

“I am not pining,” she asserted, hoping she sounded as if she were pining for nothing whatsoever.

“No?” he glanced at her small, pale face with rather a sly look in his eyes—a questioning look, too. “And yet rather than annoy my nephew, and rather than stick up for yourself in a manner you should do, you take the line of least resistance and insist that you will go home! All the way back to England, and you will probably never see Portugal again!”

She was silent, but his words caused her to blench a little inwardly.

“And it is a pity that you should not see Portugal again,” he murmured—“that Portugal should have to part with you! However, until you do leave here a little more freedom is quite obviously essential.” That he quite genuinely thought so, and that he did have a word with his nephew on the subject, Lois felt certain when, only the following day, Dom Julyan intercepted her when she and Jamie were taking their morning walk in the secluded corner of the garden they usually chose, and informed her, with a touch of quite noticeable stiffness:

“It is Senhor Fernandes’s birthday in three day’s time, and as a form of celebration his family are arranging a moonlight picnic. I shall be one of the guests, and so, of course, will my uncle—in fact nothing”—with a faint relaxing of his features that very nearly resulted in a half-smile—“would keep him away from any sort of picnic to which he was invited! Duarte has approached me for permission to escort you during the evening, and my uncle can see no reason why I should say no. Do you wish to go to the picnic with Duarte?”

At first she was about to reply in the negative, and then a thought crossed her mind which caused her to pause. It was Duarte who had put himself out to plead for her on the afternoon following the dreadful morning when she had been covered in disgrace and humiliation, and she would like at least an opportunity to thank him for his intervention. And as she was going home to England so soon it really didn’t matter very much how she comported herself during her last few days as a governess. Not that she was in the least likely to do anything that would seriously bring discredit on herself, or anyone, but she was a little tired of Dom Julyan’s stiff and critical attitude, and all at once she decided that even if she displeased him it really didn’t matter.

So, about to open her lips and say, “No, thank you, I would rather not go to the picnic at all,” she drew them together for a moment in a rather tight little line, and then obviously surprised him by responding in a different manner altogether.

“Yes, I think I would like to go very much indeed, if I can be spared.”

"I think you are quite well aware that you can— and will!—be spared!” He didn’t seem to notice that Jamie was waiting to attract his attention in order to tell him something, and swung away briskly on his heel and left them both standing on the gravel path.

Jaime plucked at Lois’s skirt.

“Was papa angry?” he asked. “He looked angry!” “Only with me,” Lois reassured him, putting an arm about him and giving him a slightly convulsive hug, for soon he wouldn’t be anywhere near for her to hug. “I’m afraid he was really very angry with me!”

But even she couldn’t understand why he should have looked so obviously filled with annoyance that even his small son noticed it. She frowned, and then sighed, and thought that life was very perplexing these days. And behind the perplexity there was a growing sense of utter desolation.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

On the night of the picnic, however, as on the night when she had dined with Enderby, she decided to try and look prepared to enjoy herself, even although she knew very little of Duarte, and had more or less snubbed him on the three separate occasions they had met.

He called for her about nine o’clock, when the moon was lifting itself like a yellow lantern above the palms and the pines. It had been a perfect day of great heat, and there was little coolness as yet in the atmosphere, despite the closing down of the velvet night full of languorous scents and sounds. The sounds were made up of the chirping of cicadas— background music that had become a positive chorus lately with the increase of heat—and the sleepy murmur of the sea breaking as if with an effort on the white beach.

Duarte’s was an open car, and for the first time that day Lois felt the wind sing past her ears as he opened up the throttle and gave it, as he called it, ‘its head.’

“Are you afraid of speed?” he asked, as they roared along the coast road towards the picnic spot— for the car had a decidedly noisy exhaust. His eyes mocked her a little through the silken darkness. “Shall I slow up?”

“No; I don't mind what you do.” And, to her astonishment, she realized that that was right. She felt reckless, heedless of consequences. She had witnessed Dom Julyan’s departure from the quinta over an hour before—doubtless to dine with the Fernandes family before joining them at the picnic spot—and the sight of him in his immaculate evening dress, with his dark, sleek, uncovered head, accompanied by his dapper elderly relative, had caused a little ache to make itself felt about the region of her heart.

But now the ache was no longer there, and she told herself that she didn’t mind whatever Dom Julyan did, or how or when he did it. She didn’t mind if he spent every minute of the time they were at the picnic spot dancing attendance on Donna Colares, or if she let everyone see she believed one day he would belong to her. The second Donna Valerira! ...

The wife who was going to make up to him for all that he had never had before!

She told herself that whatever happened she would not allow Dom Julyan to cause her to suffer inwardly, and when Duarte asked impishly whether she had had a great deal of difficulty in gaining her employer’s consent to spend a free evening, she answered recklessly:

“No, why should I? He’s my employer you know—not my jailer!”

“That’s the girl!” he exclaimed, his thick curls lifting in the wind they were stirring up. “But he looked pretty dour when I approached him, all the same.”

“I haven’t thanked you yet,” she said, more softly, “for being so awfully decent about—about that morning when Jamie fell into the pool! Apparently you went to see Dom Julyan in the afternoon.”

“I did. And I told him he had been confoundedly hasty! Dash it,” looking towards her in indignation, “you hadn’t done anything, so why should you be punished?”

Why? she echoed him, silently. But a feeling of wistfulness stole over her again. Why, why, why?

The spot chosen for the picnic was an open glade in the middle of a little pine wood abutting on the shore. The moonlight turned to silver once the moon itself had ceased to look like a lantern held aloft, and was a clear, round globe high in the starry heaven, and it sent shafts of radiance amongst the tall, straight trunks, and made a magic of the smooth sand on to which the incoming waves broke with a soft plop every few seconds. As for the sea, it looked like a pathway to freedom, Lois thought, with the moon’s path lying across it like a sword blade.

She wandered with Duarte right down near the water’s edge while they waited for some of the latecomers to arrive, and when at last everyone had arrived huge hampers of food and drink were opened up.

If Donna Colares had made herself responsible for the more practical arrangements for the picnic, as it appeared she had, then she had made a very good job of her task Lois decided, when she saw how smoothly everything was organized. The trestle tables so quickly covered with snowy tablecloths and piled with food, the portable chairs for the elder guests, the champagne that was at just the right temperature when it was poured into glasses and handed round for the toast of the evening. That toast was, of course, the elder Fernandes, and every sort of good wish was heaped on him, including the age-old wish that there were many happy birthdays in store for him, and that they would be celebrated in a similar manner to the present one.

As the really important person of the evening, greatly fussed over and made much of, he looked very pleased and happy, and Lois was almost touched when he stopped to have a few words with her, assuring her that he remembered her perfectly.

“My son is looking after you?” he asked. He patted her uncovered head paternally, as if she were a little girl, and smiled at her as if he liked her. “Have a good time, little one, and you must come and see us again when you can be spared.”

Lois thought he was delightful, as so many of these Portuguese were delightful, if only one had a chance to get to know them. But she felt a little guilty when she saw the envious glances from many pairs of brilliant dark eyes because Duarte was the one who lavished attention upon her. Duarte was quite obviously considered a ‘catch’ in the neighborhood, partly because he was quite good-looking, and very largely because he would be very wealthy one day, and young girls who had known him for years could not feel too happy at seeing him monopolized by a foreigner.

When Lois mentioned this to Duarte himself he laughed, and assured her that she was depriving no one of anything.

“These girls think only of one thing,” he said. “You”— and he laid his hand on her arm—“are tantalizing because one does not know quite what you think! You smile, and are charming, but one has the feeling that your mind is

elsewhere? Is that true?”

Lois had caught her first glimpse of Dom Julyan amidst the trees, bending over the chair of a very old lady and being excessively charming to her, while Donna Colares stood beaming at his elbow, a hand in the crook of his arm. For a moment such a fierce twinge of jealousy, and envy, stabbed at the English girl that it actually shook her a little, and she didn’t reply to Duarte immediately. He looked at her sideways with shrewd, but very soft eyes.

“There! You see?” he said. “You take so long to answer, and you stare in one direction as if compelled! What am I to deduce from that, senhorita?”

“Nothing,” Lois answered hastily, and as at that moment it struck her that her employer and the widow were coming in their direction she slid her own hand quickly into Duarte’s arm, and squeezed it a little urgently. “Please, let us go down to the beach again,” she said. “I love watching the waves come creeping in.”

“Then we will go and watch them,” he answered, returning the squeeze by pressing the hand that rested on his sleeve close against him, and they turned and left the glade.

Once on the moonlit sand she paused, feeling a little breathless, and realizing—perhaps too late—that their hurried and obvious attempt to escape must have looked a little odd. For even as they turned to leave the rest behind Donna Colares had waved, and Dom Julyan had looked as if he were coming striding straight towards them.

Two figures silvered by moonlight they stood together on the sand, and she said apologetically:

“I’m sorry I dragged you away.”

“I was quite happy to be dragged,” he assured her, and smiled down at her almost as paternally as his father had done earlier. “It is a pity,” he remarked, a little obscurely, “that my sister has plans. But for those plans. . . . Although I don’t know! They may not yet work out, and even if they do, from my point of view it was a happy day when you came here, senhorita! Or it could be a happy day!”

Lois looked up at him, faintly perplexed, and then looked away quickly. He said warmly, comfortingly:

“I am on my very best behavior tonight, so let us walk, shall we? How far shall we walk? Shall I show you the village that is within a few hundred yards? All the inhabitants will be asleep by now, but it is picturesque by moonlight.”

When they returned she received the impression that their absence had not only been noted, but discussed, and one or two of the elderly ladies looked at her a trifle curiously. But she didn’t greatly care. She had enjoyed her walk with Duarte, whose behavior has been absolutely exemplary, and she had enjoyed the sight of the peaceful, sleeping village, with the fishing boats drawn up on the beach, and the moonlight silvering the sickle shapes and tall spars. Because they hadn’t so far partaken of very much refreshment she was even feeling hungry, and when Duarte brought her a selection of tempting things to eat she shared them with him, and they laughed and joked together beneath the trees.